Physics Comment Magazine March 2018 Issue Physics Comment March 2018_v1.3 | Page 28

particle beams in opposite
directions in a circular route, and
set them on a collision course with
each other,” says Ntabiseng
Lekalakala, a M.Sc. student from
Wits University, who is now based
at CERN. “By colliding the
particles against each other at
speeds close to the speed of light,
we physically break up these
particles to see what they are made
of.” These collisions happen at a
rate of one every 25 nanoseconds
(a nanosecond is one thousand-
millionth of a second). some
of
the
world’s
top
physicists in High Energy Physics.
“Dingane
giving
a
plenary
presentation
summarising
the
upgrade activities of the Tile
Calorimeter of the ATLAS detector
was a honour to us all,” says
Mellado. One of the biggest
challenges at the ATLAS experiment
is to sift through the huge amounts
of big data that the experiment
delivers, and to only capture the
relevant data. This is where
Dingane’s software update plays a
crucial role.
Dingane Hlakulu, a student at the
Wits School of Physics, is working
on the software upgrade of the
detector. He completed his Masters
in Physics at Wits in 2017 and has
developed a keen interest in
software engineering of largely
distributed systems. In October
2017, he was invited to deliver a
plenary presentation on the status
of the detector upgrades to the Tile
Calorimeter of the ATLAS
experiment – which included After the upgrade, the readout
electronics will need to cope with
digital data with full granularity at
about 40 MHz, which means the
electronics will need to process data
at a minimum rate of 9.6 Gigabytes
per second to the off-detector
readout components. This is equal
to downloading three full feature-
length Blueray DVDs per second.
The off-detector electronics that is
used to control, configure and
monitor the process will be required
to send data at a rate of about 4.8
Gigabytes per second. “The
software is augmented to look for
specific signatures from different
regions of the detector in three
stages/levels
and
discard
uninteresting events in real-time.”
says Hlaluku. In the current
configuration of the detector, data
is processed, digitized and read out
at 100 KHz.
The fourth annual High Energy
Particle Physics (HEPP) workshop
took place between January 21st to
February 2nd at the Wallenberg
Research Centre, Stellenbosch.
Professor Alan Cornell, from Wits
University and a co-chair of the
workshop detector electronics that
is used to has been instrumental in
the growth of the field in South
Africa. “It is great to see so many
new students choose to do research
in our field. The attendance of this
year’s HEPP workshop is double
that of three years ago,” says
Cornell.
Dingane Hlakulu and Joyful Mdhluli, WITS
postgraduate students involved with the LHC
project.
Another Wits student who is
contributing to the upgrade of the
hardware for the ATLAS detector
is twenty-four-year-old
PhD
student, Joyful Mdhluli. Mdhluli
has been involved at CERN for
two years.
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The experience has changed her life.
“I’ve
been
able
to
attend
numerous conferences, where I’ve
met different kinds of people from
different parts of the world, and I've
also learnt a lot about High Energy
Physics,” she says.